Capri, or “dessert” as it’s called in places with dirty ice, is the quintessential pill for your all food poisoning needs. This antibiotic will flush everything and anything out of you. I used it once in Cambodia after what felt like certain death at Angkor Wat. It may have stopped me from projectile vomiting, but it didn’t provide me with the dependable feeling for the bumpy bus ride to the airport.

Ondanestron

According to Wikipedia, “Ondansetron, marketed under the brand name Zofran, is a medication used to prevent nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or surgery. It is also useful in gastroenteritis.” I’m not going to make any cancer jokes but suffice to say that it should do the trick.

Diphenoxylate

Turning to Wiki again, “Diphenoxylate is a centrally active opioid drug of the phenylpiperidine series that is used in a combination drug with atropine for the treatment of diarrhea.”

This is what I needed in said bus ride in Cambodia. Unfortunately, I didn’t have it then and I won’t have it on this trip as the CVS in Puerto Rico requires that a local doctor prescribe this controlled substance.

Overall

I went to Sharm El-Sheikh with nothing. I went to Kenya with ibuprofen. While I won’t have diphenoxylate with me, I have two out of three and that ain’t bad. Who knows, maybe I’ll just puke and not poop this time around.

33 COMMENTS

Doctors handing out scrips for strong antibiotics like cipro like they’re candy whenever it is medically unnecessary is precisely why the world is facing a crisis of multi-drug resistant infections. You are actively contributing to worsening a problem that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year (~700k deaths in 2017 per the UN), and the fact that you bothered to post this is evidence that you don’t really understand that practical or ethical consequences of what you’re doing. This is a shameful post.

Go read my posts. Spicy food and actual food poisoning are two different things. In Kenya, I was at death’s door. It was awful. Ms. TPOL called the doctor, he injected me one for malaria, one for food poisoning and boom I was healed. What it was, I have no idea.

Prague had it. Atlanta Final Four had it. Sharm el Sheikh 2 days of it. It’s is no joke. Short of you getting it, you have no idea.

I do carry such items, but I am also both a physician and a pharmacist. I agree with Brandon that such advice is reckless. I feel bad for the physician who are seeing people demanding medications because of this post. Stick to harmless travel advice and keep advice like this to the real experts. Best advice would be to see a travel clinic before going to at risk areas. The CDC website also has recommendations for at risk areas.

Sure buddy, if that’s what you think I’m doing. Will you come to my rescue when I’m in keeled over the toilet in some remote beach town in Albania? I doubt it. So I’ll take my pills as a precaution and be on my way.

And more thoughts: let’s make the lopsided assumption that words don’t mean anything, that a disclaimer that says this is not medical advice means nothing. A person would still have to take this blog post to his or her doctor and that doctor who presumably went to medical school would have to prescribe these medications. Then that person would have to trust in the doctor and the prescription filled. If the person chooses to do so and ODs on cipro, you’re going to say it was my fault? Faulty logic.

Based on your reading, you don’t get 1. I said this is not medical advice but let me state it again, this is not medical advice. 2. This is what my doctor prescribed to me based on terrible past episodes.

So either read and quote accurately or find another forum to misconstrue my message.

If I was offered crack in Kenya to cure the death I was enduring, I would have taken it. Same here. If I’m on deaths door like I was when I was literally shitting the bed in Sharm, I’m not going to feel bad when I have medicine.

You may not be offering medical advice, but you’re offering advice that is reckless and unconscionable. Your doctor is also at fault for providing you with an unnecessary prescription for a condition that does not, and probably will never truly exist. You’ll probably take that ciprofloaxin when it isn’t truly necessary, and needlessly help accelerate the cycle of breeding drug resistant bacteria.

You might not be taking the cipro recreationally, but that doesn’t absolve you nor your physician of guilt for irresponsible and reprehensibly selfish behavior.

Jeez, tough crowd. To start with the negative, I think that it’s actually a scrip, since a script is what Captain Kirk mangled consistently. On the less persnickety side, the best doctor I ever had prescribed what he called a travel kit. This consisted of an antibiotic, an anti diarrheal, and an anti nausea medicine. Given my travels to far away places, this was a stupid obvious good idea. If you’re on some small island in a distant land, basic meds kinda make sense. I know that cipro and promethazine were two that worked very well when my wife got dysentery. If you’re planning on taking these for fun or feeding them to the local birds every day, I’d say the previous comments are correct, and you’re doing this wrong. If not, good call.

On a side note, I see as of yesterday, a fellow Boarding Area blogger, Summer Hull’s “Mommy Points” has jumped ship from Boarding Area to “The Points Guy” blog. I suspect she might feel the need to reduce her blogging time to spend more time with hubby Josh, oldest daughter Cate and the youngest one. Guess time will tell how successful that move will be.

I guess I’m happy for her, but I absolutely detest TPG. I guess I wouldn’t mind him so much if he wasn’t a gargantuan narcissistic douchebag huckster. Summer is great. It just hurts to see her go there. At least if she does this, she’s excited.

I wrote a few articles for TPG. They treated me great. Never met Brian in person but I will defend bloggers in general by saying how they are perceived from their blog persona and how they are in person can be very different. Except for me, I’m a jerk across all mediums.

Honestly, I can’t figure out if you’re insulting me or being funny. The way I read it, you’d have to be a foolish a) actually take this as medical advice, though I do come from a family of learned doctors b) making the point that people are taking this as medical advice and how absurd that is. I’m clearly saying, I get food poisoning frequently. I’m going to 9 countries. I’m showing up prepared. Only a fool would say, but doctor, TPOL said I need Cipro! Those that think that bolster your dumbing down claim. Seriously, perspective is important.

loving your blog more and more. this is the most comments Ive seen in a long time. these brainiacs belong in the depths of the youtube comments section. even tho cipro use for travelers diarrhea is off label use its the most commonly used med for it and you describe judicious and appropriate use of it. Wonder how much these triggered people would shit their pants if u started discussing travel vaccines